Abstract

This article is based on empirical research consisting of interviews with thirty Pentecostal pastors, mainly in the Johannesburg area. It refers to the phenomenal growth of Pentecostalism in the last few decades, offers a typology, and does an analysis of its core message, values, and modes of social intervention. Pentecostalism is based on the (unmediated) experience of God and has profound implications for the believer's life in terms of his or her personal sense of agency and power. Modern forms of Pentecostalism offer a home especially to the upwardly mobile and ambitious and feeds into the Zeitgeist of the consumer society.